PILF
Dolores

Marble Queen Pothos

$22
Grade ALight 3
6″ pot · Tax included · No account

Thrives in any room with a window, as long as it isn’t sitting in the sun. Water every ten days or so — and it’s fine to wait until it wilts. It perks back up in an afternoon.

Window light. Never direct sun.
Every 10 days. Droopy is fine.
Two weeks alone is fine. Water it the day you leave.
Not for chewing. Keep it up high if something at home chews plants.
Where Dolores came from
Cut September 12 from a marble queen that’s lived in a Wicker Park kitchen for years. Rooting in a jar. Due for a shelf in December.
The Wicker Park shelf — where everything starts. Everyone on this shelf.
The most common way people kill this one

Too little light. The white parts of the leaf don’t do any work, so it needs more light than a plain green pothos. In a dim corner it stalls, the new leaves come in small, and it sulks for months. Give it a window.

How big it gets

Slower than a green pothos, because there’s less green doing the work. A couple of feet of vine a year in decent light.

What it doesn’t get along with

Cats and dogs: no. Chewing it means drooling and a sore mouth. Keep it up high if something at home chews plants.

The sun’s actual path. Window light, yes; sitting in the beam, no. Radiators and heating vents dry the air and the soil faster than you’d think — a foot or two away is enough.

A pot with no drainage hole. Water needs somewhere to go; if the pot you like has no hole, keep the plant in its nursery pot and set it inside.

What it’s trying to tell you
New leaves coming in mostly greenNot enough light for the white. Move it nearer the window.
Brown, crispy patches on the whiteSun on the leaves. Move it out of the beam.
Yellow lower leavesToo much water. Wait longer between drinks.
DroopingThirsty. It recovers in an afternoon.

Every symptom, every plant, on one page.

Where it came from

Cut from a marble queen that has lived in Wicker Park for years, rooted in a jar, potted, and grown on in window light.

Grown in Wicker Park, Chicago. Most shelves are a few blocks from where it was potted.

If you’ve killed a C, start here

A C wants a rhythm — a fern, a calathea, a fiddle leaf fig. Losing one says nothing about you. This one is a Grade A: it forgives a month of nothing.

The list for people who’ve killed a C. · How the grades work.

Something else? hello@pilf.me. Replies come from a person, usually the same day.